The Inner Monologue Of A Full-Time Photo Blogger

By

Oh, what a beautiful morning it is. I draw the antique bamboo shades covering my floor-to-ceiling windows to reveal an expansive mountain range. It’s always a mystery to me how I can see the Appalachians from my one-bedroom apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but such is the life of a photo blogger.

I roll over in bed and bump into my heavily tattooed boyfriend. He’s wearing strategically placed boxer briefs and his perfectly groomed bedhead doesn’t weird me out anymore. I hop over him and walk through my minimalist, sepia-toned bedroom. There is a bunch of chopped wood under my desk—I’m not sure how it got there, but I’m planning to make a fire tonight and I think I may casually roast artisanal s’mores over it with some of my L.L. Bean-outfitted friends.

The walk to my kitchen seems to take forever, as my bedroom is the size of a small warehouse. I trip over a moleskin notebook that has some uplifting, albeit cliché, phrases scrawled all over it — journaling has always been a hobby of mine. I can smell the scent of coffee beans as I make my way to the pantry. There are bronze, hand-hammered pans hanging all over my kitchen, and I’m so glad that I had those wooden shelves made from Icelandic Birch imported to hold them.

A bunch of half-full coffee mugs are scattered around my kitchen counter, which makes it a bit tough to cook breakfast, but I’m used to it. I make a massive bowl of Greek yogurt with fresh strawberries, blackberries, chia seeds, and flax. I drizzle honey that I bottled from the personal honeycomb I harvest in my backyard and almost immediately I have the feeling that today is going to be a beautiful one. I open a yellowed copy of the New York Times that looks like it came from another era (I don’t know why mine always look like that) and I realize behind the paper sits a steaming latte with a foam heart in the center.

The style section is impressively robust this morning, and I let my thoughts drift as a gaggle of chocolate Labrador puppies play around my gothic-inspired foyer. They’ve already torn up three of my antique Egyptian rugs, but they’re so darn adorable—I can’t tell them to stop.

I finish my latte and head back to my room to change for the day. My bed is perfectly made with a French bulldog napping on the duvet (yes, I have quite a few dogs), and my boyfriend is putting a polka-dotted handkerchief into the coat pocket of his tailored Armani suit. Even though he’s an architect, he has a flare for sartorial elegance that knows no bounds. He kisses me, grabbing his cream-colored, fixed-gear bike on his way out the door. He’s always been a cycling enthusiast; I’m more of an aquamarine Vespa kind of girl.

The morning seems to be getting away from me; I should probably change out of my oversized long johns. The mass amount of surfboards in my room blocks my way to the closet, but I could never part with them, even though I find the sport repulsive. I get to my closet and it’s refreshing to see all my clothes organized by color—from white, to off-white, to light gray, to gray, to black. My wardrobe is sleek and modern, elegant yet wearable, expensive but understated, which is important for a girl who works from home. I pull out a vintage t-shirt and some cutup jeans, topping off the outfit with a knitted beanie that I made last winter. Even though it’s probably eighty degrees in my apartment from all of the coffee I brew, it’s essential that I wear an excessive amount of layers. There is nothing better than an absurd amount of layers.

Once dressed, I go to my desk and grab a stack of fashion magazines. I start tearing out random pictures and tacking them on the wall in no particular order. I’m unsure why I feel compelled to do this every morning, but it’s a ritual that I’ve learned to live with. Plus, it’s hard to look at so much exposed brick all the time, so it’s nice to cover it up with pictures from French Vogue and Italian Vanity Fair every once in a while.

I set the magazines down and walk past the myriad mannequins in the corner of my bedroom to get to the pitcher of chilled limewater resting on my nightstand. In my opinion, there’s nothing better than a tall glass of limewater made from SmartWater, fresh limes, and sugar in the raw. As I sip on my drink out of a mason jar, I dream about the pesto chicken, watercress sandwich that I’m planning to make for lunch today on my granite cutting board. I’m almost tempted to make it right now. But alas, I must get to work.

I grab a camera from my Oriental armoire and snap errant shots of my apartment. It’s amazing to me that people like to look at the pictures I take of my stuff, but such is the life of a photo blogger.

You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.